Page 11 of Rat Park
Prince’s dad laughed. “No wonder you’ve got a black eye, kid.”
“I ain’t a kid,” Dominic grumbled.
“No?”
“No. Nobody around here is a kid,” he said.
Prince’s dad watched him carefully before smiling. He picked up the baggie on the table and held it up.
“How would you like to make some money?”
*****
As long as Dominic ignored the fear of getting caught, being a drug runner wasn’t difficult. It was like being a pizza delivery boy, but with crack instead of pies. He got an address, cycled or walked there, and dropped off the goods.
Between the fact that he was getting house and board and being fed on the semi-regular, Dominic didn’t get paid much, but he didn’t really care. At night he’d get high, recompensed with his own stash, and it was easier that way. It wasn’t like Dominic was going to spend his money on anything else.
What else was there?
He was smart about the job too. Took different routes, stayed vigilant.
In the beginning, at least.
He tried to be canny and not sample from his stash when he was working, but it was hard to get up in the morning and face his life without getting a little high.
Dominic knew the signs of an ambush. When it was silent and still, he knew to avoid a house, but that day he’d been feeling rough and smoked a little too much. Crack wasn’t like heroin. It didn’t last as long, and running after the high always left him feeling jittery and distracted. He arrived at the drop and didn’t even notice the lack of people around. He saw the officer a moment too late and didn’t make it three steps before he was caught.
He didn’t even put up much of a fight. Dominic knew the feeling of being defeated only too well.
Despite all of his misadventures, it was his first time being processed. He was barely seventeen, so he was put into juvie instead of jail. He knew better than to expect someone to pay his bail, but he kept his mouth shut no matter how many times he was asked about who he worked for or what they offered him. His fate would be worse if he talked.
Dominic hadn’t felt fear for a long time, but he felt it then. He had a lot of things to be scared of: the fact that he was in the system now, what would wait for him in his cell, what would happen when he got out. The only thing that managed to get its hooks in him, however, was the prospect of going sober. He wasn’t naïve enough to think there wouldn’t be any drugs on the inside, but they’d be so expensive as to be impossible to acquire without selling parts of himself he’d managed to leave untouched.
It surprised Dominic that people hadn’t thought about going sober as one of the circles of hell. It wasn’t even just the physical side, it was thewant. That consuming, desperate anxiety to not be, to disappear, to stop feeling for one goddamn second.
Dominic hated everything. He hated the air in his lungs and his body and his pathetic self. But not even that pain lasted forever. In juvie, there were more reasons to get high than ever. The days were endless and solitary. Dominic had to strain to be vigilant every second of the day to avoid getting eaten up by the bigger dogs around him. He thought about giving up, about getting to his knees and selling what he had left so he could take a hit, but it was almost easier to just put one foot in front of the other and keep to himself.
It wasn’t juvie that got him sober—not really. Juvie seemed to be constructed to harden you, to make you meaner and faster and more unforgiving. It was a broken system Dominic fell through the cracks of, staying in a quiet corner until he could breathe fresh air again.
CHAPTER FIVE
By the time Dominic got out a few months later, he hadn’t heard from anybody in his life. He was still underage, so he was sent to his mom’s, the only address he’d been able to put down when he was first admitted.
Dominic’s mom didn’t say anything as she opened the door for him. She’d been informed about his stint in juvie and the fact that he was being released that day to her care. Dominic stood there awkwardly, wondering if she was about to turn him away, when she surprised him by stepping forwards to give him a hug. Her thin arms wrapped around him and he just stood there, not realizing what was happening until a moment too late and she was already moving away.
Inside, the house looked unchanged but for a new, brown stain on one of the worn couches. Not knowing what else to do, Dominic followed his mom into the kitchen.
“You hungry?” she asked, lighting up a cigarette before turning to look at him.
“Not really.”
“Bullshit. Sit down,” she said. He sighed but sat down.
He watched her as she moved around the kitchen. It was like looking at a stranger in a stranger’s house. Everything looked familiar, but there was no sense of connection there. It was just a scene he had witnessed through a window once, never belonging to him.
She set down a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup in front of him when she was done.
“Your favourite,” she said, sitting down at the opposite end of the round table.
